Fearing the worst will often help it happen.
The new computer screen on my desk was wider across than my television and took up every inch of free space. I approached it cautiously, half expecting it might speak my name or demand a retinal scan as part of the log in process. It sat there, watching me as I slid into my chair and reached for my glasses. I had a fleeting thought of 2001, A Space Odyssey, and wondered if Keir Dullea might be hiding around the corner with a warning to use this new technology in peace. Also new, a tiny spy-size camera and lens attached to a stick-like mount, a scanner, and a new printer to replace the last new printer which was barely a month old. The long term goal of "going paperless" seemed to have made significant progress over the weekend.
There was a sterile feel to this new environment and I felt what has become an immediately recognizable sense of vague disconnection to my old and comfortable world as well as a recurring regret for never having leaned to type. Patients still sign in but I have to wonder how far off is a card swiping machine or a touch panel. I imagine self serve xrays and instead of a nurse escort to an exam room, I see a moving conveyor belt and a remote control video screen. Statements will be available on Facebook and the privacy laws will be rewritten. I feel a strong sense of regret for the old days - for letter writing, for text books rather than text messaging, for real film cameras as opposed to digital imaging, for roadmaps rather than GPS. The world is changing, reinventing itself, and not all for the better. I feel no regret that I will not be here to see all of it - technology is for the young and openminded. I came of age in the 60's and am disinclined to do it all over again. Too much change, too fast, too radical - it warps my overburdened memory and tires my weary mind.
Gadgetry - ubiquitous and progressive, making our lives better, faster, more free. So they say. It makes me yearn to curl up in a corner with a good novel before books themselves become obsolete.
The black cat eased/sleazed/insinuated himself between me and my pillow, clawless paws kneading my shoulder and yellow eyes staring intently. There was hazy sunlight coming through the blinds and the sound of the early morning newscast in the background. The tabby, neatly tucked in behind my knees, woke and stretched and on the other pillow, the tuxedo cat yawned and then began a slow, firm, nudging for attention. The black dog was already awake and anxiously pacing beside the bed, I could hear her nails doing their morning rise and shine dance on the wood floor while the small brown dog, neatly surrounded by cats on all sides, began giving me a series of wake up ear kisses, hoping to hurry the process of breakfast and a trip outside. The remaining two black cats sat side by side in the doorway, meowing impatiently and poised to race for the kitchen the moment they were sure I was awake - the battle was lost before it had begun - and any sign of movement on my part would be the green light for the morning free for all. I surrendered but made my terms clear - it was Saturday, the first one I'd had off in months, and once they were all attended to, I warned them, I was going back to bed and expected to be left in peace. No hitting, no gymnastics on the bed, no chasing, no tantrums, I admonished them, No howling at the least sound from outside and absolutely no fighting.
There are days when I would cheerfully exchange my world for one of my cats - imagine a life consisting of sleeping and eating, free from responsibility and financial worries, car repair bills, alarm clocks and the IRS. Drama would be limited to deciding between canned food or dry, the worst crisis that could arise would be the lack of a clean sandbox. There would be a human to attend to my every whim and an enviable simplicity to living - no ethical dilemmas, no job demands, no attention to details, no unhealthy emotions to contend with.
What I needed, I decided as I crawled back under the covers, was a new perspective, a time out to reflect and reevaluate, to sort out priorities and make a new plan. I drifted back to sleep on this rare Saturday off, dreaming of salvation and sugar daddies.
Wasted and fragile from the cancer, pretty much several steps behind from the alzheimers, and out of touch from the pain medication, my mother sat across from me in my brother's tiny and crowded living room. She seemed to be looking at me but, it slowly dawned on me, she was actually focused on some abstract point over my shoulder and not seeing me at all. There was irony here, I thought, some twisted quirk of fate that had brought us to this particular impasse, but I couldn't articulate it - it was more a sense of something to come, something fated to happen. More than that, I couldn't identify.
I didn't know it then, at least not precisely, but I would never see any of the people in that small room again. It was December then and before the spring thaw my mother would be dead. My daddy would follow only a few short years later and my brothers would move on, angry, vindictive and just as harshly unforgiving of me as I was of them. There would be no reconciliation, no re-connecting, no overcoming the past. Ours was a family of strangers who cut ties cleanly, permanently, with relief rather than regrets. No use crying over spilled milk, my grandmother often told me, Clean it up and move on.
The spring thaw is predictable in more ways than one - the snow melt will come, more or less the same time each year and for a time we will put the icy winds behind and be amazed at the rebirth all around us. We will shed all those protective layers and look up to the sun, forgetting the cold and the snow and the hurt feelings and there will be a temptation to believe in the possibility of people changing, a longing to believe that redemption and rehabilitation are as simple as a change of seasons. Each new spring brings a promise of better days, flowers and birds and the sweet smell of newly mowed grass - seductive, comforting, long overdue. I welcome it but with reservations and a little caution, reminding myself that people are not seasons and that any change is superficial, transient, and probably built on a hidden agenda. I come from a toxic family and no spring thaw will redeem it.
So I sat in this small room, cluttered with victorian-ish knick knacks and dark wood paneling, heavy drapes that obscured the sun and the smell of furniture polish and cigarette smoke in the air, an old and proper room, airless and confining. I watched my sister in law lay out my grandmother's china and silver, crystal wine glasses and damask linens, watched my brother entertaining his young son, listened to the sounds of family. And slowly, I became more clearly aware that I didn't belong, that I would never be able to make the compromises required to be accepted, and more surely, that I didn't want to. I loved the side of my daddy that fought for me but despised the side that accommodated my mother at any cost. My brothers were strangers to me, I barely knew either past small talk and my mother had always been someone I would have preferred never to know at all, not even in passing. I didn't think this out, didn't put it into words, didn't anticipate the consequences, but a part of me knew that I had nearly arrived at a destination I'd been headed for all my life.
On the drive home, it began to snow. Several more inches would be on the ground by morning and we would spend the day shoveling and clearing paths from the cabin, letting the dogs run themselves to exhaustion, keeping the wood stove burning and our thoughts to ourselves. Christmas was over and the spring thaw seemed very far off.
With a firm enough commitment, you can create a reality which did not exist before - Margaret Halsey
Life is a package plan and good comes with bad.
I looked dismally at my tax return, wondering how it was possible to owe additional taxes and thinking that somehow I've gone badly astray in these late years.
My ten year old car has developed an intriguing knock/click when I turn corners and the telltale oil stains on the pavement after a day of being parked are a bad omen.
I scrounge change out of the washing machine for a pack of cigarettes and wish desperately for the urge to quit.
The latticework needs replacing, the back deck is in need of repairs, the fence is standing but several boards are on their last legs, the grass needs cutting and the azaleas ought to be cut back before they overwhelm and engulf the front steps.
A back tooth is making the journey from nuisance to problem and I dare not even open the current vet bill.
I have nightmares that my decision to decline health insurance will return to haunt me.
The big picture isn't much better - treachery is just another name for politics, the profiteers of Wall Street and the insurance CEO's continue to rake it in unregulated and federally protected, the ultra conservative right makes war on everyone and anyone who disagrees with them. Guns are now a fashion accessory.
It's getting hard to tell who's in sorrier shape, me or the world I live in.
For those of us who have been spared the dilemma of aging parents, it can be a mixed blessing. I discover I have more than enough to worry over and stress about in my own life and simply cannot imagine having the additional responsibility of parental care, the burdens of decision making and the guilt of powerlessness.
My cousin Linda is not so fortunate. First having seen her own parents through end of life care, she now faces a repeat performance with her partner's surviving parent. She must navigate through a maze of choices, none good or easy to live with, none that will satisfy everyone involved, none that she will later think well of. There are financial realities to consider, impossible medical predicaments to be resolved, living arrangements to be made - there are no quick fixes to be had and no truly good solutions to be found. Through it all she will be haunted by memories of her own parents and she will re-feel the pain of helplessness and loss. Her nature is to care and care for and she will need every reserve of strength, hope, patience and understanding.
She will do this with few and far between complaints. She will do this with sacrifice and quiet. She will do as much as she can, as long as she can because it is her nature and because she has no other alternative.
She may doubt her decisions, she may even question her motives, but she will not lose herself in the process. She is far stronger than she knows and she will recognize her limits and reconcile with them.
She may not know it just now, but I do.
Worry will make you old before your time, my daddy liked to tell me. After a lifetime of marriage to my mother, I often thought his was the true voice of experience. If anybody had known worry, it was my daddy.
This past weekend as I canceled my plans, rearranged my schedule and left work early to care for the small brown dog - she had reacted badly to her annual vaccinations and I spent the entire weekend feeding her baby aspirin and applying warm compresses to her tender sides, the slightest touch brought a bright yelp of pain - I thought of my daddy's advice and wished I was better able to follow it. By Saturday night, the black dog was limping as well though I couldn't tell if she actually hurt or was simply competing for attention but by Sunday it didn't matter since I was wild with worry over the pair of them, badly sleep deprived, and in no mood for advice. Take a breath, my vet told me calmly, Are they better than yesterday? When I had to admit they were - marginally - she again told me not to overreact and that it would pass. And get some rest, she added sternly, They'll both be fine. And by this morning, they were - the small brown dog sleeping peacefully on my pillow and the black dog joyfully chasing the cats to distraction, no sign of a limp. I was exhausted and irritable, having wasted a perfectly good weekend's worth of worry over nothing, paying interest on a debt that wasn't due.
Worry is better saved up and stored under a mattress for the times that you really need it.
The more I think about it, the more I think it's something in the water.
Greeted by a crashed computer system that refused to grant me access, I called our tech support division and was elated to actually reach a live human being. Can you log on so that I can see what the problem is? she asked in a frilly little Valley Girl voice and I felt elation slip away. If I could log on, I pointed out, Odds are I wouldn't be calling you. There was a pause while she considered the logic of this, then she giggled, Oh, right. I wondered if it was too early for aspirin.
If every day were a Monday there might be some mitigation for the astounding and escalating level of ineptitude and sheer stupidity in the world. You might, for instance, be able to excuse it on the grounds of a hangover or some other foolish flawed behavior - temporary amnesia, perhaps, brought on by a migraine headache. But alas, it's far too widespread for that. There is a low hanging smog over us these days and I suspect it's the remains of millions of dead brain cells, free floating in search of a decent burial, victims of alcohol, drugs, laziness or quite simply dried up and useless from lack of exercise. The world is, no doubt, easier to tolerate if you don't reason or question or allow yourself the luxury of curiosity, imagination or involvement. It's either that, or there really is something in the water smothering us into a pit of stupid, apathetic, sullen, and silly.
My bad, the cheerful, empty headed little valley girl giggled again. And another million brain cells evaporate into the already polluted and crowded skies.
There is something supremely satisfying about watching - from a distance, more's the pity - the daughter of a lifelong friend come into her own - seeing her leave the protected nest and try her wings, explore, mature, learn, make mistakes. She is her mother's daughter and yet she is not - there is more daring in her, more of a willingness to take risks, more independence of spirit. It comes from her mother's own experience of fighting parental control and breaking free without sacrificing love and without fear. More, I have watched her mother overcome the urge to keep her close, setting her free with pride and unshakable faith despite the inevitable loneliness such freedom would bring. The best parenting creates a child who stands alone without abandoning her raising.
We pass along the best and worst of ourselves to our children whether we mean to or not and although we might willingly die to keep them from harm, in the end all we have to keep them safe is the hope that we did the best we could. There is no certainty so we let go and pray, keeping a room made up and a cell phone close by. We need to know that they know they can always come home and be taken in.
I have had moments, although only a half dozen times and always in passing, what kind of mother I might have been and where life might have taken me if I'd made a different decision. Then of course I think of alligators eating their young - a practice I've always considered highly sensible - and the moment passes.
Miracles happen.
After six days without food or water, after his stray mother had been trapped and taken away, after more than one fruitless under the house search - the only surviving puppy in a litter of five got tangled in a maze of insulation, asbestos and chicken wire and began to cry. Another search and rescue party was immediately organized and the little orphaned mutt was brought to warmth and safety. My friend Michael, muttering and complaining every step of the way, made him a bed of a cardboard box and an old sweatshirt, filled a hot water bottle, and began the slow process of foster parenting - feedings every few hours from an eye dropper, keeping a careful watch, providing a warm bath and a trip to the vet the very next day. My friend Michael - impatient, demanding, unsentimental and totally immune to puppy eyes and sad, endearing puppy faces - had been taken in hook, line and sinker.
I visited last night and found the two of them together in the upstairs den. The cardboard box and sweatshirt had been replaced with an unused plastic litter box and several thick towels and the puppy was now wide eyed and walking although his progress seemed to involve mostly taking a few steps and then falling over or bumping into a random object and then falling over. He smelled of milk, puppy breath and scented soap and looked like a tiny, fat, short legged little bear cub. Michael has named him Miracle.
Strange bedfellows indeed.
I brought a friend, my daddy said tentatively when he arrived for dinner, Hope you don't mind. The well dressed and attractive woman beside him, her arm linked casually with his, smiled at me. Not at all! my husband said, smoothly intervening and swinging open the door, The more the merrier!
I was twenty-four that summer and had had my share of awkward moments but Emily Post had never covered the etiquette of meeting your daddy's girlfriend and for a moment or two I was too surprised to react. Then my daddy smiled and said to me, You remember Trudy, and the pretty woman extended her hand. My husband gave me a sharp nudge and somehow I came to my senses, recovered my manners, and shook her hand. Of course, I managed to say, From the quartet. My daddy beamed at me and said, I thought a little gratefully, Exactly!
The quartet had consisted of my mother and daddy and Trudy and her husband, Mitch. They had performed for years at lodge events, church socials and birthday parties and had gathered every Tuesday night in our basement to rehearse. I remembered the sweet harmonies of "Goodnight, Irene" and "Maryanne", a nonsense song about a witch doctor and several old Baptist hymns - all sung with enthusiasm and feeling if not great talent. Afterwards there was beer and pretzels as they stood around the kitchen and made small talk, drinking and telling stories, washing up and joking with each other about who had forgotten what lyric or key change, about what they would sing at the next gig and who should solo. And now half of the quartet was on my doorstep - with my mother safely thousands of miles away and Mitch long dead from a heart attack at fifty.
Dinner, drinks and a game of hearts went off without a hitch but at some point several things began to become clear to me. I slowly realized that this was not a new relationship - it was small things mostly, the way he looked at her, the barely noticeable intimacies in the way he briefly touched her hand, the feeling behind the smiles and the unspoken things that you sense rather than see - this affair had been going on for years. I would never know if he intended to make me an accomplice that night or had just jumped on an opportunity and never looked back and while I was glad for him, I also felt a little angry at being manipulated. You should have a chance to choose the secrets you're expected to keep.
We saw them on and off that summer and for several summers after. My mother's name was never mentioned, marriage never came up, and my brothers were never included. Even small bits of happiness have a price.
The first of April approaches unstoppably. Buds on the trees are no longer hesitant, pollen is beginning to cloak everything in a green haze, evenings with magic light offer themselves up for the asking, no strings attached. And I am overrun with stray cats.
There is evidence of them everywhere - muddy little paw prints on the hood of my car and the washing machine in the garage, latticework haphazardly worked out of place for easy access and quick exits, the sounds of feline conflict shattering the peaceful dark mornings. They stroll across the lawn as if they own it, lay in wait for squirrels on the back fence, ambush unsuspecting robins and sparrows, make mush of flower gardens and grow fat with the weight of kittens to come. They are defiant but shy, indifferent but jealous, flirtatious but bold. They dodge traffic with ease and outrun dogs and children with no effort at all, as if they have a special immunity to danger. Two doors down, my non-cat loving neighbor puts out traps and tainted food, calls the newspaper to complain, arms herself with a broom and a coat of self righteousness and flies into a wicked rage at the sight of any cat, collar or not. She is offset by the family up the street who put out food and water on a regular basis, drawing more and more strays into the neighborhood, steadily increasing the cat population with well intentioned but misdirected kindness.
This is kitten season, when shelters will fill up in a heartbeat with unwanted litters and we will reap the rewards of overpopulation with fatal injections or carbon monoxide chambers or simple neglect - so preventable - and we will do this because we admire our cats and think they deserve the freedom of unlimited breeding. Cats will be cats, we say, they shouldn't be confined, so we wash our hands of responsibility for them. After all, we say, you can always get a new one. They're especially plentiful this time of year.
Some of us are kinder to our dirty laundry.
